18 pages • 36 minutes read
Robert FrostThe Gift Outright
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The “Land” Symbolizes the United States
The words “America” or “United States” don’t appear in the poem. Instead, the speaker uses the term “the land,” with “the land” symbolizing the United States. While the historical context lets the reader know that “the land” represents America, the symbolism remains complex. The speaker declares, “The land was ours before we were the land’s” (Line 1). America is also a symbol of fate. If the reader looks at the line through the lens of destiny, the paradox resolves itself. The land belonged to the Americans before they could belong to it due to the fate embedded in the symbology. The Americans had to have the land, as the land represents an act of preordination.
Since the speaker refers to the land as “she,” the United States represents a woman. The Americans must “surrender” (Line 11) to the woman/country and become one with "her." The symbology scrambles gender dynamics. The woman/country has the power, and the Americans yield to it. The gender dynamics get subverted further as the “we” presumably contains women. Thus, other women, men, and people of any gender must submit to the women. Though the Americans didn’t want a monarch, the powerful, gendered symbolism of the land turns the land into something of a queen.
As a symbol of the United States, the land represents mutability and vulnerability. From this angle, the country isn’t a powerful queen but fragile and subject to change. The country switches owners—it goes from England to the Americans. It then needs the Americans to protect it through “deeds of war” (Line 13). The nation's “unstoried, artless, unenhanced” (Line 15) traits suggest an innocence or naivete that might not be ready for harsh reality.
The “We” Symbolizes Americans
The poem doesn’t include the term “Americans,” but, as with “the land,” the historical context lets the reader know that the plural pronouns symbolize Americans. From one angle, the symbolism presumes unity. Americans came together and worked selflessly for their “gift” (Line 13), the United States of America. As the history of the United States demonstrates, America wasn't cohesive—there was no practical “we.” In A People’s History of the United States (1980), Howard Zinn declares,
Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex (unpaginated, from History is a Weapon website).
This suggests that the unified “we” is more idealistic than realistic. From another angle, the poem doesn’t present the “we” as a family, and it doesn’t erase conflict. The speaker acknowledges war, and their ambiguity allows for conflicting interpretations of the "we." Pairing Frost’s “we” with Zinn’s quote, the “we” symbolizes force. Whether a person wants to be part of the “we” doesn’t matter. The “we” includes everybody in the nation, including the “conquerors and conquered.” The Indigenous people, the enslaved Black people, and the Americans without much privilege “gave [themselves] outright” (Line 12) to the nation, even if they did so as victims of oppression. They’re a part of the “land of living” (Line 10) and the nation’s environment, so the "we" includes them.
The Motif of Surrender
The motif of surrender bolsters the three key themes. It supports the positives and negatives of gifts. Surrender can be a positive, giving a person a higher purpose. Conversely, it can be negative, exposing them to harmful experiences. In the poem, surrender leads to “salvation” (Line 11) but also to “many deeds of war” (Line 13). The idea is good and bad.
To surrender, a person must accept mutability and vulnerability. Surrender represents a change and makes a person open to the world. The speaker states, “We were withholding from our land of living” (Line 10). The Americans denied their mutability and vulnerability, and they didn’t want to change or open themselves up to what the land had to offer them.
Surrender suggests passivity, linking the idea to United States history and paradoxes. The poem brings together clashing interpretations: There’s a powerful nation with a passive people. Even after they surrender, they remain timid, “vaguely realizing westward” (Line 14). The people are skeptical. As they’ve handed over their agency to the nation, they are hesitant to act. Doubts and ambiguity counter tropes about the forceful, decisive American spirit.
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By Robert Frost
